Green

Is global warming a hazard to your health? Just ask 42 year-old Abdon Felix Garcia, a farm worker in Central California. Oh, wait! You can't, because he died on Wednesday after working in a vineyard in 108 degree heat. And he's just the latest casualty of the heat wave that's gripping California's Central Valley; three other farm workers have died under similar circumstances since May.

Meanwhile, the EPA issued a 588-page federal notice on Friday that, the AP reports, makes "no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people's health."

That is, like, so bizarre! Because just three weeks ago, the folks at the EPA had concluded that it did, and called for the regulation of greenhouse gases under the auspices of the Clean Air Act.

read more great energy content at getenergysmartnow

The push is on, big time. The solution to all of America’s problems, evidently, is to drill, drill, drill. This is now the Republican mantra as they seem to believe that they have found a winning political issue, no matter what the implications of this “win” might be for America’s future.

Let us be clear. Efforts to increase (actually, struggle to maintain) America’s oil production can be part of a holistic energy package. But, to be clear, only part: far more critical is to use efficiency to produce negagallons to help provide some breathing space to move as much of America’s transportation off oil. (To me, the most fruitful path for results by 2020 is mass electrification: rail and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles along with GEM-full flex-fuel for the liquid portion of the ground transportation system.) Even if transportation is 100% non-oil, we will still want oil for many industrial processes and to support manufacture of many products. But, efforts and discussion to explore additional oil production should be part of a larger discussion. And, they should be grounded in truth.

By David Sassoon visit solveclimate for more great climate posts

 

One point is clear: the potential regulations of greenhouse gases
under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented
expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on
virtually every sector of the economy.

Stephen Johnson, EPA Adminstrator, July 11, 2008

That's what the man whose job it is to protect the environment said
today when he released a 1000 page document on regulating global
warming emissions. You'd think a man in his position would relish the
thought of unprecedented expansion of EPA authority.

Not Bush's Johnson.

The Fates are weeping -- this wrong man at the right place. An opportunity to make "hope and history rhyme" -- in Seamus Heaney's famous phrasing -- and instead he limply walks away.

I believe.....the Clean Air Act is ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases.

There is nothing better suited on the whole earth today. In any
case, in Mass v. EPA, the Supreme Court decided it was a matter of
legal imperative, not suitability.

No matter how you slice it, the regulation of greenhouse gases will
have a profound effect on every sector of the economy. That's the
point. The economy is reliant upon a model of energy production and
consumption that has reached its safe limits. We need profound effects,
quickly.

If not you, who, Mr. Johnson? If not now, when?

Forget about science fiction; WALL-E is séance fiction—it channels the soul of our land-loving founding father, Thomas Jefferson. Now that a handful of loose wingnuts is denouncing WALL-E as a piece of pro-planet propaganda, I’d like to note, for the record, that Jefferson would have absolutely loved WALL-E.

Normally, I wouldn’t presume to speak for the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, but given Jefferson’s reverence for our most precious resource, i.e., the soil, he surely would have appreciated the underlying message of Pixar’s latest animated opus— that it’s our civic duty to be good stewards of the land.

Yeah, yeah, I know that WALL-E’s creator, Andrew Stanton, is insisting that WALL-E is first and foremost a love story, but the whole plot hinges on another relationship: the one between us and the dirt beneath our feet. Jefferson was an early advocate of maintaining soil fertility through such practices as crop rotation, and would doubtless be horrified by the pollution and depletion of our topsoil that’s become standard operating procedure since the advent of industrial agriculture.

(Of course, he’d also be appalled that the Fourth of July has turned into a giant meat-fest; Jefferson was an unabashed lover of fruits and veggies who maintained that produce should dominate our diet and meat should be used sparingly, as a “seasoning” or “condiment.”)

by David Sassoon 

visit solveclimate for more great environmental posts 

There is a category of psychological illusion called "projection" which
serves the purpose of reducing personal anxiety. It's a defense
mechanism in which one attributes one’s own unacceptable or unwanted
thoughts and emotions to others.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal provided a textbook case of the phenomenon in an editorial called Global Warming as Mass Neurosis. It's yet another installment of exemplary denialist rhetoric in need of some Freudian analysis.

The author, Bret Stephens, accuses those concerned about global
warming of practicing a sick-souled theology. He doesn't realize he's
blaming others for his own illness: his dogmatic embrace and belief in
the perfect functioning of free markets.

It's not clear whether Stephens believes in God, but he does seem to
believe mightily in his Invisible Hand, in the face of rational
evidence to the limits of its perfect functioning.

His faith leads him to deny climate science practiced by climate
scientists in peer-reviewed settings and embrace hearsay science
practiced by political operatives in the world of manipulated public
opinion.

Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for
political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

It leads him to suspect an anti-capitalist conspiracy, verging on the edge of McCarthyist paranoia.

Last December, the White House simply refused to open an e-mail from the Environmental Protection Agency because it contained the unwelcome conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health and therefore need to be regulated. The EPA finding was a response "to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment," the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Faced with the proverbial inconvenient truth, the White House not only refused to open the e-mail, they ordered Jason Burnett, the EPA official who sent the document, to "recall it," according to the Washington Post.